We had a post recently about HMS Exeter, which is going to be engaging the PLA in exercises on the mainland. Still no word on how they're going to get the ship on shore--my own guess is that it'll be towed on rickshaws.

The ship was launched in 1979 by Lady Mulley and entered service in 1980. She is the 5th Ship to bear the name Exeter, her predecessor being famous for her role in the Battle of the River Plate and the sinking of the German "Pocket Battleship" the Graf Spee on 13 Dec 1939. The current Exeter saw service in the Falkland Island War in 1982.

Ship's Motto Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful)

Now how do you like that? Speaking of the Royal Navy, the Royal Marine Commandos have a flash game, if you want to see how they do their recruiting.

Over at The Green Side, there's another letter from "Dave," whose previous letter home was featured here at Grim's Hall. The second one is at least as good as the first. If he could be asked, I imagine that Mr. Reagan wouldn't mind sharing the page with this Marine at all.

Here's an excerpt. For those of you who aren't associated in some fashion with the USMC, let me begin by noting that "aggressive"--unlike in civilian life, where it's normally employed as a synonym for "unemployable" or "unstable"--is considered a high compliment among Marines.

During one of the ordered pauses in the Falluja fight, we chopped a rifle company off the line with a very aggressive battalion commander. Basically he was told that we thought the muj were running lose in the area and that he should head up there and "develop the situation." I have gotten to know this guy pretty well here. He is a very good commander and a tough guy. In fact, I remember telling him that if he went past a certain point, he would be decisively engaged. We had estimated that if he got into a decisive engagement, he could be outnumbered by as much as 5:1. You can imagine what he did. He took his Marines right to that point.

Sure enough, the fight was on. It was a 360 degree engagement that lasted 8 hours. An 8 hour firefight is an eternity. To put it in perspective, this guy was in both OIF 1 battle for Baghdad as well as the Falluja fight. He states that the firefight up near this town was the toughest he has been in. We fired quite a bit of artillery and brought in a number of sorties of close air for them. By the time it was over, the estimates (now confirmed) are that they killed over a 100 muj. We could not understand why they kept coming but they did (more on that later). Throughout it all, very accurate mortar fire up to 120mm was falling inside the Marine position. Automatic weapons and RPGs were crisscrossing through the perimeter. The Marines just
laid their in the micro terrain and squeezed of well aimed shots.

The Battalion Commander stayed that day until his guys broke the muj and he "owned the field" (his words). He then withdrew back to his original position. In the same town, we now have Marines living 24/7. They are conducting joint patrols with the Iraqi Police and the ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps). When they first arrived, the people were very standoffish and even hostile. Now we are getting more and more walk up intelligence (where the locals literally risk their lives in order to walk into our lines and tell us where the muj are). The reason for the turnaround is simple. We have pushed through the bow wave of intimidation and terror that dominated the town when the muj were there. The Marines did it through aggressive raiding and downright obstinate refusal to budge regardless of the costs. The people were watching the entire time and have made up their own minds where their best future lies. It has gotten to the point where the mujahadeen are now firing mortars indiscriminately into the town as it is the only effective means of maintaining any kind of influence over the people.

Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan, American, former President, honorary Doctor of Philosophy, honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Of those titles, only the first two were of any real import, save that they showed the honor that men felt he deserved even in his own lifetime. I suspect that the honor in which he is held will only increase now that he is dead. It was not only the British, but the Swiss who saw nobility in him; the Swiss government registered arms in his name in 1984:

The arms are: Or, a bear rampant sable, armed and langued gules holding between its forepaws a mullet argent; on a chief of the second, standing on a ducal coronet of the first a falcon argent, armed and langued of the third, wings displayed and inverted. Crest: On a gentleman's helmet proper a demi-horse sable, unguled or, charged on the shoulder with an actor's mask of the last. Motto: "Facta non verba".

The motto translates, "Deeds not words." It was quite a list of deeds.

UPDATE: Some curiousity has arisen about the heraldry. I can't guess what it's meant to symbolize, except one part: the black bear on the field of gold. The Latin name of the black bear is "Ursus Americanus," that is, "The American bear."

No commentator I heard noticed that the Baroness Thatcher curtsied to the coffin--a gesture which protocol reserves at state funerals to the corpses of royalty. I am sure the Queen will not reprimand her.

The world could soon catch a glimpse of Afghanistan's fabled Bactrian gold, as preparations get under way to exhibit some of the 20,000 pieces that make up the country's most important ancient treasure trove.

Dates and locations have yet to be finalised, but the US, France, Germany, Japan and Greece are among the countries interested in hosting the 2000-year-old haul that has remained intact despite years of war and upheaval.

Hosting, yes... that's the word. It's all about the gold!

While other important archaeological sites are plundered or have been ruined by war, the Bactrian gold, discovered by a Soviet team near the northern town of Shiberghan just before the Red Army invasion of 1979, has had a number of narrow escapes, adding to its allure and mystery.

The Red Army found it, and it wasn't plundered? That is a narrow escape.

The favourites to host the collection first are the Americans and French, and Rahin hopes interest in the treasure will generate funds to build museums and combat looting.

Today we have two examples of the worst in news service writing. The first is from the Associated Press:

A British Navy warship [The HMS Exeter] with 249 sailors aboard arrived in Hong Kong for a five-day routine port call on Friday, a consular official said.... The port call in Hong Kong is for ``rest and recreation'' but the vessel will participate in a series of training exercises with the People's Liberation Army on the mainland, Gould said.

How do you suppose they're going to get the ship onto the mainland?

The second example is from the Agence France-Presse:

A US navy carrier battlegroup is to launch a 'show of force' in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea off west Africa as part of an unprecedented global operation to demonstrate America's command of the high seas, a US diplomatic source told AFP on Friday.

Really? The diplomat said we were going to stage an exercise off "oil-rich" west Africa? The State Department's even worse than I thought.

Black Five has organized a MilBlogger's tribute to the D-Day operations. As we approach the 60th "birthday" of European freedom, it's worth taking the time to read through these retrospectives. The MilBlogs have mustered a lot of expertise and skill for this exercise, and the results are impressive.

I was reading an article the other day, in the local newspaper, about an elderly Korean gentleman who has moved into town and opened a martial arts studio. He chastened the reporter who had come to interview him not to suggest that the martial arts were 'all about fighting.' "No!" he said. "The purpose is social harmony."

That is exactly right. The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.

Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.

The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men. This is half the answer to the problem.

But do we not try to discipline and guide the others? If we catch them at their menace, don't we put them into prisons or programs where they are monitored, disciplined, and exposed to "rehabilitation"? The rates of recidivism are such that we can't say that these programs are successful at all, unless the person being "rehabilitated" wants and chooses to be. And this is the other half of the answer: the discipline and guidance must be voluntarily accepted. The Marine enlists; the criminal must likewise choose to accept what is offered.

The Eastern martial arts provide an experience very much like that of Boot Camp. The Master, like the Drill Instructor, is a disciplined man of great personal prowess. He is an exemplar. He asks nothing of you he can't, or won't, do himself--and there are very many things he can and will do that are beyond you, though you have all the help of youth and strength. It is on this ground that acceptance of discipline is won. It is the ground of admiration, and what wins the admiration of these young men is martial prowess.

Everyone who was once a young man will understand what I mean. Who could look forward, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, to a life of obedience, dressed in suits or uniforms, sitting or standing behind a desk? How were you to respect or care about the laws, or the wishes, of men who had accepted such a life? The difficulty is compounded in poor communities, where the jobs undertaken are often menial. How can you respect your father if your father is a servant? Would you not be accepting a place twice as low as his? Would you not rather take up the sword, and cut yourself a new place? Meekness in the old men of the community unmakes the social order: it encourages rebellion from the young.

The traditional martial arts tend to teach young men to undertake flashy and impressive, but not terribly effective, fighting techniques. Only as you grow older do the masters of the art teach you the real secrets--the subtle, quick, physically simple ways in which the human body can be destroyed. In this way, the old retain their power over the young--although they lack the speed and strength, they have in discipline in training more than enough to maintain the order. Social harmony is maintained in the dojo: the young revere the old, and seek to emulate them. Your father may be a servant, but he is still a warrior--and a more dangerous one than you. The father, being past that age in which biology makes us vicious, guides the son or neighbor to protect society rather than to rend it. It is not particularly different in the military.

If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous old men. This means that, if you are yourself on your way to becoming an old man, you have a duty to society to begin your preparations. The martial arts are not the only road--my own grandfather did it through a simple combination of physical strength, personal discipline, and an accustomed habit of going armed about his business. There was never a more impressive figure--or, at least, there was never a boy more impressed than was I.

The martial virtues are exactly the ones needed. By a happy coincidence, having a society whose members adhere to and encourage those virtues makes us freer as well--we need fewer police, fewer courts, fewer prisons, fewer laws, and fewer lawyers. This is what Aristotle meant when he said that the virtues of the man are reflected in the society. Politics and ethics are naturally joined.

I normally don't link to things that The Sage of Knoxville links to first, simply because I assume most people will have seen it. However, Professor Bainbridge's post on civil and military virtue is one that everyone should take a moment to read. I'm not sure that the subject heading will entice everyone--few are interested in reading about, let alone practicing virtue--but the matter could not be more important:

The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms.

There the good Professor relies upon Chesterton, who wrote just before the horrors of the first World War. He then turns to General Washington:

An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.

It is the introduction and diffusion of vice, and corruption of manners, into the mass of the people, that renders a standing army necessary. It is when public spirit is despised, and avarice, indolence, and effeminacy of manners predominate, and prevent the establishment of institutions which would elevate the minds of the youth in the paths of virtue and honor, that a standing army is formed and riveted for ever.

Is that not precisely where we are? Do we not see each year bringing more public odium upon the Boy Scouts? What do you suppose would be said about an organization that was today 'established to elevate the minds of the youth in the ways of honor and virtue' except for cries that it was 'Hitler Youth' redux? Does not each year bring more demands that "effeminancy of manners" be set aside as an outdated concept, while the practice of such manners by men be accepted? Is not public spirit degraded by people who say that the poor soldiers in Iraq joined the military only because of their poverty and the hope of college money? By people who say they are slaves?

Aristotle taught that the ethics of a man should be precisely mirrored in the politics of the state--that, if you can develop the right kind of man, the state will follow. Aristotle begins his treatment of right ethics with the virtue of bravery. His overview sounds familiar after Washington:

[W]isdom is goodness of the rational part, gentleness and courage of the passionate, of the appetitive sobriety of mind and self-control, and of the spirit as a whole righteousness, liberality and, great-spiritedness.

There is a further treatment of each of those concepts here, for the interested. See also the writings of other men, less famous but many as brave as any Ancient Greek, at the Mudville Gazette.

How to restore the martial virtues in the public generally? It is a difficult undertaking--indeed, it is plagued by several 'chicken and egg' problems, as most of the public steps you could take to encourage them require the acceptance of the virtues that you're hoping to encourage. How would you get a state legislature to vote to institute courses in military science at the high school level? (There is another question as to whether that would work--Plato's Laches begins with the question of whether practice-fighting in armor encourages bravery in the young. That bravery in fighting should be encouraged was never in question for them.) How to approve any such program? You'd need a strong bloc of voters to speak to their legislators.

Where to get them? Through argument--and yet I was approached just the other day on the streets of D.C. by a fellow from something called the Center for Nonviolence, who was canvassing in the opposite direction. He was rather dismayed, even shocked, by my assertion that nonviolence in and of itself was not something to be encouraged. Nonviolence is not a virtue. Nonviolence is a state--usually a pleasant one, but demonstrably inferior to, and to be set aside in favor of, the state of justice. Violence can be a very good thing. Yet this "Stop the Violence" movement has won so many converts that I hear children echoing the slogan the way they might say "Go Team!"--as a blandly acceptable premise that should win approval from all quarters.

We would have a lot less of the sort of violence people wish to stop if we encouraged more people to be prepared to fight bravely for the common peace. This I'll treat separately in another post.

JHD sends the following with this comment: "Talking about pissing the rags off! he-he! Grunts can stay out longer and the rags can't track them. Next thing you know a Strike Team hits them and they have no clue where they came from!" He's talking about the 1st FSSG, "Force Service Support Group," Air Delivery Platoon. They run a KC-130, which is a fairly big monster, but they claim they can drop to you without giving you away:

The KC-130 cargo plane, loaded with 22,000 pounds of food and bottled water, took off in total darkness, with its running lights extinguished and the pilots and crew donning night-vision goggles for the hour-long flight.

"We come in low and fast. We give the enemy very little opportunity to acquire us," said co-pilot Lt. Col. Jeffrey V. Young, 42, a reservist from Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 234, based in Fort Worth, Texas, which was one of the two squadrons supporting the mission.

The plane slowed as it approached the drop zone. Then, as the pilot pulled the aircraft up hard and increased power, the loadmasters in the cargo hold opened the back door.

"They release their gate and everything just slides out," said the pilot, Capt. Matthew W. Crocker[.]

Regular readers know that I lived in the People's Republic of China for a while back before 9/11. The Chinese are a rising power who intend to dominate the entire East and Southeast Asian region. Part of their strategy is an ongoing "information warfare" assault on the United States, particularly an attempt to degrade the US' standing to bring China to heel on human rights.

The report, claiming the commission "remains especially concerned about the human rights situation in China", said that a total of 11 countries, including China, have engaged in or tolerated systematic, ongoing and egregious abuses of freedom of religion.

Zhang Jiyu, vice president of the China Taoism Association, said that the United States, in the name of religion, has been wielding evil assaults at China's religious policies and freedom situation simply by paying attention to hearsay materials and evidences.

"The U.S., in the pretext of human rights, is grossly meddling in China's internal affairs on issues such as Hong Kong and Falun Gong cult issues," Zhang said.

The interim government that will run Iraq after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty took shape today, as U.N. officials in Baghdad announced the members of the government's presidential council and recommended the composition of a new cabinet to the country's prime minister-designate.

Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, announced that Ghazi al-Yawar will be Iraq's president, and that Ibrahim Jaafari and Rowsch Shaways will serve as deputy presidents.

Brahimi also announced today that on May 31 he forwarded his recommendations for the composition of the new Iraqi cabinet to Prime Minister-designate Ayad Allawi. News reports indicated names of other new cabinet members and that the existing governing council had dissolved itself....

Brahimi's statement said consultations in forming the interim Iraqi government have been going on without interruption for the last four weeks. "These consultations have involved the (Iraqi) Governing Council, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and a very large number of representatives of the Iraqi public, including political parties, professional associations, trade unions, tribal and religious leaders, academics and intellectuals, women's and youth organizations, and others," the statement said.

As has been widely noted, the UN envoy was involved in exactly none of these decisions. Indeed, the US State Department was roundly ignored by the Iraqi Governing Council as well. The IGC took charge and, by unanimous internal consent, delivered a fait accompli about which State and the UN have to pretend to be happy.

It's always tempting to assume that a defeat for the UN is a victory for civilization, and in fact this appears to be the case. For more than a year the IGC has squabbled, quarreled, bickered and (especially the efforts of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, which caused the abandonment of a already-active plan to transfer power to a government chosen by local 'town hall' sessions) shot the process in the back. Suddenly, however, the IGC has stepped up and become exactly what it was supposed to be all along. It became a functional government, which has just dissolved itself to make way for its replacement.

What caused this? My personal suspicion is that it was the raid on Chalabi's INC. The official record of charges against him was that he was an Iranian agent, as proven by the fact that he had demonstrable ties to Iran and occasionally passed information their way. Every member of the IGC, considering this, realized that they themselves had at least as strong a connection to Iran as Chalabi--many of them, in fact, had been living in Iran this last little while.

We have, therefore, a new Iraqi government that is genuinely sovereign. It is free in the only way you can really be free--by driving off those who would control you. This is precisely what the government and the UN has claimed to desire all along.

Is it a good thing? Probably. It certainly limits the likelihood of civil war, as this new government has the unanimous support of the outgoing IGC, which includes some powerful figures who lend to the new government some measure of their credibility. We are informed that these new appointees have little support among the Iraqi people; but the CPA has less, and the UN even less than that. "Support us, or the foreign devils will return" is an appeal that is widely understood wherever you may travel. It is probably as good a start as could be hoped--certainly imperfect, but so is the world.

I'll refer you to Sgt Hook for a review of the situation in Afghanistan. Many of you who frequent the Milblogs ring will have seen this linked from the Mudville Gazette. In it Sgt. Hook takes on Robert Novak, and gives an impressive account of the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropic Lightning").

Today the Pacific Fleet's news service is reporting that the USS Wasp will be adopting a new battle rifle for her watchmen. We've all been eagerly awaiting the XM8: will the Navy get to field-test the weapons?

Well, no. Actually, the Wasp is finally catching up to the Army, by choosing the weapon that became the standard Army battle rifle in 1969.

After 15 years of use, USS Wasp's (LHD 1) ordnance division VG is finally saying goodbye to the ship's traditional rifle, the M-14, and hello to a more compact, quick-action rifle, the M-16.

The sudden[!] transition is expected to improve external shipboard security by allowing watch standers to intercept potential enemies with a faster and lighter weapon.

ANGRY D-Day war veterans last night branded BBC Scotland "fools" for not producing a single programme to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.

Scottish troops played a key role in events of June 6, 1944, including the taking of Pegasus Bridge by Royal Marines under the command of Lord Lovat.

Veterans of "the longest day" said they were stunned that the broadcaster had not followed the rest of the BBC which is broadcasting five hours of prime time drama and 16 hours of documentary and live coverage of events on the Normandy coast....

A spokeswoman for BBC Scotland confirmed there would be no commemorative Scottish D-Day programmes: "There's nothing coming from up here in Scotland."

BBC Scotland may forget, but we have not. Let us start by taking a look at Lord Lovat's commandos.

One thing you probably don't know about Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade is that D-Day wasn't their first amphibious assault. They did so well at Sword Beach in part because they'd been involved in a disaster. Operation Jubilee was "intended to determine the practicalities of seizing an enemy-held port by direct assault, as well as forcing the Germans to divert troops to the defence of Occupied Europe. The assault force comprised 4,961 Canadians from 4th and 6th Canadian Brigades, 1,057 British Army and Royal Marine Commandos, and 50 US Rangers." The Allies threw six thousand of their finest into 'the Grim Gap of Death' just to see if it would work. The notion was to land the commandos first, to silence the big coastal guns at Dieppe in advance of the Canadians' landing. Pretty much the only part of this assault that went as planned was Lord Lovat's end, where his Commandos quickly took the batteries to which they'd been assigned. Cameron Highlanders assigned to support him advanced two miles inland to prevent the German positions being reinforced.

Nothing else went close to plan, and the Canadian forces suffered 68% losses in the assault. The retreat to sea accomplished, the survivors brought back lessons for D-Day: the need for artificial harbors, to avoid the necessity of capturing one of the so-well defended natural ports.

When D-Day finally came some two years later, Lord Lovat and his men were returned to the fray. Elements of the 1st Special Service Brigade (under the command of Free French fighter Cpt. Phillipe Kieffer) landed at Sword Beach with the 22nd Dragoon Guards, who wore green berets to the landing because "helmets were not manly." The 22nd had been raised from a combination of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoons ("Quis Separabit?" or "Who shall separate [Ireland from the UK]?") and the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons ("Vestigia nulla retrorsum!" or "No Steps Backwards!"). They advanced to the bagpipes.

The Scots were, on this occasion, filling the role the poor Canadians had held in Jubilee. Rather than being tasked with commando raids to silence the batteries, they were themselves the assault force. Fortunately, the team assigned their old role did the job just as well as they had done in 1942. A team of paratroopers rushed the German positions just before the landing, managing to do--in the face of superior German defenders--what 4,000 pounds of bombs had failed to do: silence the guns. The paras were killed, and two of the guns repaired; but their work gave the Scots breathing space.

Lord Lovat's remaining forces landed at Ouistreham, clearing the town and taking the Pegasus bridge. This you will have seen in "The Longest Day," which also featured the living piper from the invasion itself.

Worth noting in the history is the Kieffer prayer, a bold devotional offered on the morn of the assault:

Lord, I shall be very busy today. I may forget about You, but do not Thou forget about me.

In this they recalled the fighters of the Bannockburn, which the Archdeacon of Aberdeen remembered in his writings of 1330:

The Scottismen commonally
Kneelt all doun, to God to pray,And a short prayer, there made they,To God to help them in that ficht.And when the English king had sichtOf them kneeland, he said in hy:'Yon folk kneel to ask mercy.'Sir Ingram said: 'Ye say sooth now,They ask mercy, but not of you.'

Quotes enough. But if you would have more, I refer you to a Scot patriot-poet, who wrote "The Piper of D-Day."

Did you know that there was a White House Commission on Remembrance, tasked with (among other things) keeping Memorial Day alive? It is the only active Presidential Commission to be established by Congress, which demanded it by force of law just toward the end of the Clinton Administration. It establishes the "National Moment of Silence," on the apparent theory that a whole day of rememberance is too much to ask. The commission explains:

In May 1996, the idea of the Moment was born when children touring Washington, DC, were asked what Memorial Day meant. They responded, "That's the day the pools open!"

On December 28, 2000, by Public Law 106-579, the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance was established. The Moment has the personal support of the President of the United States.

The moment begins at 3 PM local time, wherever you happen to be.

Marine Moms and Dads has proposed in addition a candle ceremony, to be held at 8 PM Iraq time. This means lighting a candle in the morning here (Pacific -- 9am Mountain -- 10am Central -- 11am Eastern -- 12pm), but the purpose is ceremonial. It is intended to honor the Fallen, and the living who soldier on.